


Disappeared Among the Shady Blades

by Sylvia_Locust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvia_Locust/pseuds/Sylvia_Locust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She looks at him more closely, remembering a sad, soft-spoken boy, reeling from some unnamed tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disappeared Among the Shady Blades

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt by citizen_ephiny, who wanted to see a s7 Sam interact with a first season character. Set after 7x23, went AU after s8 premiered.

“Hey Mom, look.”

“Hmm?” Andrea scratches Tide off of her grocery list, distracted, wanting to get in and out of Wal-Mart as fast as humanly possible. She glances into the cart. “Lucas, please put the Fruity Pebbles back.”

He grabs the box impatiently and touches her shoulder. “Look! It’s Sam.”

She turns her head and sees a large man with sad eyes, staring resolutely into a shopping cart full of industrial strength cleaning agents. 

“Sam who, honey?”

Lucas sighs, the sound of aggrieved teenagers everywhere. “That wildlife guy? His partner pulled me out of the lake when I was a kid?”

She looks at him more closely, remembering a sad, soft-spoken boy, reeling from some unnamed tragedy. Tall and skinny and quiet, looming behind his partner like a late-afternoon shadow. 

The man in front of her seems more self-assured but no less miserable than the kid he’d been. Still, it’s clearly him, it’s the same nose and eyes and chin but he is much broader and taller than she remembers. Deep circles are etched under his eyes and his brow furrows as he reads the ingredients on the back of a bottle of floor cleaner.

“Agent Hamill? Sam Hamill?”

He blinks and looks up at her. There is no recognition for a moment, and he frowns before his face clears.

“Lake Manitoc.” His voice is hoarse and she wonders if he’s caught that strange flu that’s going around, the one that makes everyone act so listless and strange.

“Right, hi. Andrea,” she reminds him.

“Of course.” He clears his throat. “And this must be…Lucas?”

“It’s Luke now,” says her son, standing taller.

“He thinks it’s Luke now,” Andrea says with affection as Lucas scowls.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” the agent smiles. “I never could get my brother to stop calling me Sammy,” he says, and then his face closes again and he studies the handle of his shopping cart. The silence stretches awkwardly. 

He looks up again. “I’m glad you guys are looking so well. This part of Wisconsin has been…” he trails off uncertainly, glancing around at the other customers lethargically pushing their carts.

_He looks so sad_ , she thinks, instinctively touching Lucas’s shoulder for comfort and making up her mind. 

“Look, no offense, but you really look like you could use a home cooked meal. Would you and your partner like to join us for dinner tonight? Nothing fancy but…it’s sure to be better than that floor cleaner.”

He looks down at his cart and nervously twists a bottle around. 

“I…

“Yeah!” says Lucas. “Please come over? I wanna see Dean.”

He looks like he really wants to beg off but can’t think of a way to do it politely. “Well, I, I’ve been on kind of a weird diet…” he hedges.

“It really is the very least I can do after all you and your partner did for us.”

He looks troubled again but finally agrees. “Okay, dinner, yeah. That’s…I can do that.”

“Vegetarian?” She asks. “Vegan?” He shakes his head. “South Beach? Raw food?”

He laughs, soft and low. “Nothing like that. I’m sure whatever you’re fixing will be fine. I’ve just…been trying to avoid too many processed foods.”

“Not a problem,” she beams. “I’ve been growing my own vegetables for years and I’ve got some broccoli all washed and ready for dinner.”

“Sounds nice. Thank you.” He smiles then, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Only…it’ll just be me. My partner’s not here.”  
***

He shows up at 7 on the nose with a bottle of organic table wine and an apologetic look on his face.

“My name’s not Hamill,” he says straight away, handing her the bottle. “And I’m not really an agent with the US Wildlife Service.

She smiles. “I figured that out when you pulled me out of a haunted bathtub.”

His cheeks turn bright pink at the memory and he studies his feet.

“Right,” he mutters, not meeting her eyes.

“Hey,” she touches his arm. “If I’m not embarrassed, you can’t be. It wasn’t exactly my finest moment.”

He looks up at her without raising his head, and she flashes on the way he looked seven years ago, peering at the world through a mop of bangs. His hair’s grown out considerably since then.

“Come in. Everything’s almost ready, I just have to make the salad and then see if I can wrestle Lucas away from his PlayStation.”

As he helps her chop up vegetables for the salad, she says “I hope you guys got better at disguising yourselves. I mean, what kind of federal agents drove a car like yours?” 

He laughs. “Still got her. She’s parked out front.”

“And you were so baby faced! I can’t believe you fooled my dad.”

“Well, he caught on to us pretty quickly. Anyway, Dean always said it was all about confidence. You know, the way you walked or talked or displayed a badge.”

Talking is easier after that, and dinner’s not nearly as awkward as she thought it might be. They eat pasta primavera on the screened-in porch to the sounds of crickets chirping and mosquitos buzzing just out of reach. She tells him how hard it was packing up the lake house, and Lucas keeps up a steady stream of chatter. She wonders what Sam thinks about him, how different Lucas is now from the silent, withdrawn boy he’d met so many years ago. Sam’s maybe not as effortless with kids as his partner was, but he talks easily with Lucas about the Brewers, and stupid internet videos, and what Lucas wants to do when he finishes high school. 

If his eyes dim a little each time each time Lucas mentions Agent Ford—Dean—he still manages to redirect the conversation smoothly. But Andrea can see the worry in his eyes.

The only real hiccup occurs when Lucas admits, “We saw you guys on the news last fall.”

Sam freezes, fork halfway to his mouth, and shoots her a look.

“It’s okay though, we knew you weren’t really serial killers. I told anyone who would listen and then mom said it was probably better if I just kept quiet about it so I did.” He looks up at Sam and pushes his hair off his forehead. “Sorry.”

“No, I, yeah, thanks. For trying to defend us. You’re mom’s right though, it’s probably better if you don’t tell anybody you know us. Or that I came over tonight.”

“Because you’re supposed to be dead?”

He laughs a little at that. “A few times now.”

When they’re finished eating Lucas goes inside to wash up the dishes and she divvies out the rest of the wine. They’re silent for a few minutes, watching the sun sink below the horizon, before he clears his throat.

“You probably have some questions.”

She does, dozens, but she’s not sure how to ask. And he seems so _weary_ , she doesn’t want to add to his troubles. She lifts her glass and takes a long swallow.

“Dean?” she asks finally.

He sighs and leans back in his chair, resting one ankle across his thigh, gazing out at the trees.

“He’s…Dean’s my brother. I can’t remember if we told you that.”

She shakes her head, but finds the revelation unsurprising. She remembers how comfortable they’d been around each other, how they had seemed to have whole silent conversations with just a look. How they’d both barreled down the dock and dove straight into the lake to save her kid without a second thought.

“What happened to him?”

He stares into his wine glass for a long time. “I don’t know. I can’t find anybody—any _thing_ —willing to give me a straight answer. He just vanished.”

“I’m really sorry.” She slouches down and wraps her thin sweater more tightly around her, thinking of how close she had come to losing Lucas. How he’s all she has left since her husband and dad died. “How could he just…disappear?”

Sam laughs bitterly. “Nobody really disappears, right? People just stop looking for them.” He sounds about a hundred years old when he says that.

She swats at a mosquito that’s found the small tear in the bottom of the screen.

“And you’ve spent the last seven years…getting rid of ghosts like Peter Sweeney?”

“More like our whole lives. More or less.”

She takes a moment to imagine this, her brain struggling to grasp the sheer volume of ghosts and spirits ( _and other things?_ ) that must be out there in great enough numbers to occupy these two brothers for years and years and _years_. Then she thinks about the things that wore their faces and slaughtered dozens of innocent people, and she takes a deep shaky breath.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He rests his hand on her forearm and gives her a sympathetic look, and _that_ certainly hasn’t changed, he’s still got that down pat. “If it makes you feel better, lightening doesn’t usually seem to strike people twice. Unless you go looking for it.”

“Like you do.”

“Like we do,” he agrees, taking his hand back and plucking at the fraying cuff of his jeans.

“I know you travel a lot,” Andrea says. “But anytime you’re in this area, you’re welcome to stop by. Stop by for dinner again.”

He nods, but she knows he doesn’t mean it.

“You could…you could bring Dean by. When you’ve found him.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He gets up to leave shortly after that, with a carefully phrased suggestion that she keep growing her own food for a while and stay away from non-dairy creamer. She walks him to the door, her head still swirling with questions that she no longer wants the answers to.

“Thanks for dinner,” he says earnestly, pulling her into a brief but firm hug. “It’s been…” he steps away. “It’s been a really bad…I don’t think I’ve spoken to anybody in like, a week. So just, thank you. And thank Lucas too.”

He turns and walks down the front path to his car, shoulders hunched as though he’s walking into a winter storm instead of the soft June breeze.

And she’s not really surprised, not _really_ , to see his face on the news again the next night, this time wanted for questioning in connection with an act of domestic terrorism that took out a Sucracorp warehouse up near Beaver Lake. She turns off the TV before Lucas can see it, feeling more and more uneasy about the country’s food supply. As they sit down to eat leftover pasta on the porch, she wonders if they should start keeping chickens.


End file.
